A Living Nightmare
by abstractwhisk
Summary: The Doctor loses Rose in a dream, and even more so in real life. Post Doomsday,


He was running. For once he was not running for his own life, which made a nice change, but instead he was running for Rose. He was going to lose her, and he hadn't even saved the world. He skidded around another corner. If he didn't get there in time, she was gone. Like a whisper in the wind, a memory, Rose Tyler, dead forever. Unlike all of those people who were only dead for a while. He stopped running for a moment as he reflected on what he had just thought.

"That doesn't even make sense!" he said out loud, even though the only other person for miles was Rose, and she certainly couldn't hear him. Rose. The thought of her name got him running again, as though he'd been electrocuted. He burst through a set of double doors and continued running down a stark white hallway with only one thought on his mind. Rose.

Finally he came to the end of the last hallway. There she was, Rose,_ his_ Rose, with her back to him. In between the two of them was some kind of force field. He poked it experimentally, before cursing and jamming his finger into his mouth. Sucking on it furiously to relieve the pain the blue sparks had caused.

"Okay," he said to himself, "Good to know. Do not touch blue force fields." His hand flew to his pocket and he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. Aiming it carefully at the force field he adjusted the settings.

"Stand back Rose," he said, but she obviously couldn't hear him.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said a somewhat familiar voice from the other side of the force field.

"Good thing you're not me," replied the Doctor, not looking up. Finally he was satisfied and pushed a button. A bright light burst out of the end of the screwdriver, bounced off the force-field, and hit him square in the chest, knocking him off his feet.

"Damn," he said, standing back up and brushing himself off.

"Told you," said the voice rather smugly.

"Now look here-" began the Doctor, finally looking up to see who he was talking too. When he caught sight of the man, he stopped for a moment, gaping.

"What the- but you're-that's just impossible- you can't really be…me," he stammered, staring at the man that was very much so him, "I mean, you look like me, devilishly handsome, if I do say so myself, but still, you just _can't_ be me!" The other Doctor grinned in a truly evil kind of way.

"I am everything you are, and everything you are not. Everywhere you've not been, everything you've not done, and every deep desire that you've ever felt, but not been able to succumb to. And I'm ginger. But I am you."

"Okay," said the Doctor, as though this happened to him everyday, "But what do you want with Rose, and how come you can hear me, but she can't."

"Special little trick I picked up," the other Doctor said dismissively, "As for what I want with her, she is going to die, and you're killing her."

"Do you mean that, because you're me, or because me being here is going to make you kill her?" asked the Doctor, "So is it literally, or kind of metaphorically?"

"Both," said the other Doctor, and he pushed a mauve button on some sort of remote.

Rose lit up. Not in the nice 'her-smile-lit-up-the-room' kind of way either, but in a bad way. Blue light streamed from every pore and she screamed. Such pain it was voiced in that scream that no human would even be able to comprehend what it was she was actually saying. The Doctor was not human. He could hear every word. A bit of him seemed to die inside as he was forced to listen to her crying out to him for help.

"Doctor!" she screamed, "Oh God, Doctor! Doctor! Help me, save me, make it end!" There was nothing he could do; nothing at all, and it was almost too much to bear. He felt her pain, in the most real way possible. It was not just as though his hearts simply went out to her, but that he could feel part of her actual, physical pain.

There was no joke he could make to hide his feelings this time, no laugh to mask that pain. There was no way to make it stop, nothing to hide behind, just the burning realities of truth that shown through. Tears brimmed at the edges of his eyes and he sank to his knees, adding his hoarse yells to her unbridled scream.

Soon there was only one voice left, and it was his. She was dead. He did not need to see her lifeless body to know, nor did he need to listen to her final breathe. He knew by the feeling that left him there sobbing on the floor. The feeling as though he had been slashed open and both his hearts ripped out, leaving a gaping hole. The hole that Rose had once filled. Now she was just a memory, a memory that caused him too much pain. Without Rose, there was no love, no hope, no happiness, and no point. He had often thought that he wouldn't be able to live without her, and he now knew that to be true. The physical pain that they had shared for a moment was gone, to be replaced by the much harsher emotional pain of knowing that she was gone. He could not stand it.

"Kill me," he begged the other Doctor, "End it! I can not live without her!" The other Doctor smiled.

"I can," he said smugly and pushed the red button again, before disappearing. The Doctor shone with the same bright light as Rose had, and he began to yell again. He writhed on the floor in agony. In English he screamed for Rose, for not being able to protect her and then he began in Gallifreyan. The beautiful language was ripped apart by the pain and sorrow in his yells. The universe rang with it, for the last of the Time Lords was dying. The universe rang with something else too, a small, smug laugh.

-

And then he woke up, cursing the nightmares that had troubled him ever since that fateful day on earth. The day that he had lost her, but then, it wasn't a dream, and he'd had to live on without her.


End file.
